(CNN)A former Pentagon official who led a recently revealed government program to research potential UFOs said Monday evening that he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.
His decision highlights the trade-offs that Republicans, who have long pushed for fiscal responsibility, are making as they seek to score their first legislative victory since assuming political control. The $1.5 trillion tax bill, which cuts taxes for businesses and individuals, is expected to add $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. Rather than pay for those cuts, lawmakers are relying on rosy assumptions about economic growth and suggesting they will cut spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security to help bring down the deficit.
Mr. Corker has been the most vocal about the need to rein in the federal deficit. He voted against the initial Senate bill, the only Republican to do so, after party leaders rejected his request to require automatic tax increases down the road if the overhaul did not generate enough revenue to pay for itself.
As recently as last Wednesday, Mr. Corker said the final changes being made to the combined Senate and House bill had done little to assuage his concerns that his party was being fiscally reckless.
“My deficit concerns have not been alleviated,” said Mr. Corker, who lamented that the bill could have been improved with more time.
On Friday, Mr. Corker stunned many in Washington when he said he would back the tax bill, which, while imperfect, would still be good for the country.
The legislation would cut taxes for corporations. American taxpayers, in large part, would also get cuts, though most of the changes affecting them would expire after 2025.
Opponents of the tax plan immediately searched for a motive in the hope that they could alter his vote in the narrowly-held Senate. With just a 52-to-48 majority in the Senate, Republicans have little room for defections given that Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, is receiving medical treatment in his home state and is not expected to return to Washington in time for the vote. On Monday, two additional Republican senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, said they would vote yes.
As new details in the tax bill came to light over the weekend, an article published by the International Business Times suggested that Mr. Corker’s vote was won in exchange for a last-minute provision that would benefit real estate developers by making it easier for them to take advantage of a new, more generous tax structure for so-called pass-through businesses, whose owners pay taxes on profits through the individual code.
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Mr. Corker, who was active in the real estate business in Tennessee before becoming a senator, retains a financial stake in companies that could benefit from the change.
Critics of the Republican tax overhaul adopted a new rallying cry to criticize a bill that they say is packed with advantages for the rich: “The Corker Kickback.”
Mr. Corker, in the interview, called the accusations ”disheartening” and said that he had not changed anything in the final bill.
“There’s nothing to buy me off with,” Mr. Corker said.
On Sunday, Mr. Corker sent a letter to Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the Republican chairman of the Finance Committee, asking that he explain how the provision became included in the bill.
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“Because this issue has raised concerns, I would ask that you provide an explanation of the evolution of this provision and how it made it into the final conference report,” Mr. Corker wrote. “I think that because of many sensitivities, clarity on this issue is very important and hope that you will respond in an expeditious manner.”
Mr. Hatch, in a letter issued on Monday morning, defended Mr. Corker and said he was “disgusted” by reports that suggested Mr. Corker had played a role in the provision’s addition. He said Mr. Corker had wanted a less generous pass-through exemption than had been included.
“I am unaware of any attempt by you or your staff to contact anyone on the conference committee regarding this provision or any related policy matter,” Mr. Hatch wrote. “To the contrary, virtually all the concerns you had raised in the past about the treatment of pass-through businesses in tax reform were to voice skepticism about the generosity of various proposals under consideration.”
In fact, the Senate bill that Mr. Corker voted against already contained big benefits for the real estate industry. In large part, that is because of a provision cutting taxes for the owners of pass-through entities. Such businesses, like partnerships and limited liability companies, do not pay taxes themselves, but instead pass through their tax liabilities to their owners. Currently, such income is taxed at rates as high as 39.6 percent. But under the Senate bill, much of that income could be taxed at a rate as low as 29.6 percent. The bill limited those tax savings, partly by pegging the lower taxes to the size of a company’s workforce.
President Trump and the Republicans aim to pass their tax overhaul before Christmas. Does it deliver on their promises?
By DAVE HORN on Publish Date December 18, 2017.
Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.
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The final bill released on Friday included a new provision permitting the real estate industry to take advantage of the lower tax rate, tying the savings to the value of their properties — regardless of their size or their number of employees. Mr. Hatch said he had inserted the provision after discussions with the House and Senate negotiators writing the final bill and a congressional leadership aide pointed out that a version of it was in the House bill.
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Democrats remain unconvinced, and they have taken to social media to voice their concerns.
“There really isn’t any other good explanation is there?” Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, wrote on Twitter, suggesting that the provision was the reason that Mr. Corker decided to back the bill.
Others, however, suggested that Mr. Corker’s change of heart was more political than financial and that he did not want to be the lone Senate Republican to vote against his party’s tax bill.
“The conspiratorial speculation about Corker’s real estate pass-through holdings seems thin to me,” said Scott Greenberg, a tax analyst at the conservative Tax Foundation. “Perhaps a simpler explanation for Corker’s flip is that his vote wasn’t needed before but is needed now.”
In Tennessee, Mr. Corker’s intended vote was welcomed on Monday.
“We’re very happy with his final position,” said Bradley Jackson, the president of Tennessee’s Chamber of Commerce, who had discussions with Mr. Corker and his office in recent weeks.
Mr. Corker said his turnaround came after he engaged in deep discussions with business groups in Tennessee and around the country, the Republican leadership in Congress, his Senate colleagues and his wife. He also spent many private moments considering how to vote, meditating over the question on the balcony of the Senate chamber.
While Mr. Corker said it was “not something that’s pleasant” to be the only Senate Republican to oppose the tax bill, his colleagues were generally respectful of his decision and only prodded him gently.
In the end, Mr. Corker was convinced that the additional debt that the tax bill would pile on was manageable relative to the country’s $43 trillion balance sheet and that businesses in his home state should have the opportunity for the additional foreign investment and other benefits that he believed the tax cuts would facilitate.
He said that he planned to make fiscal restraint a priority next year as Republicans move on to other initiatives like infrastructure and wanted to ensure that any legislation to help rebuild America’s roads and bridges was actually paid, and not financed, through deficit spending. After 2018, when his term expires, Mr. Corker’s future is less clear. But he said he was not ruling out running for office again in some capacity.
The final bill was not a ‘home run,’” Mr. Corker said, noting that he was at peace with his choice.
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“I feel like it was the right decision. I have no qualms about it,” Mr. Corker said.
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Sarah Palin’s family was thrust into the national spotlight in 2008 when Sen. John McCain picked her to be his GOP running mate in the campaign for president.
Now, after years of attention that accompanied Palin’s role as a popular and controversial conservative advocate and media personality, the family is once again under scrutiny, this time after her eldest son was arrested on suspicion of breaking into his parents’ home and beating his father.
Painful new details emerged Monday about the arrest of Track Palin, who at one point pleaded with his father to shoot him, according to a police affidavit. The document said his father, Todd, was brandishing a gun but refused to shoot.
After his arrest Saturday, Track Palin, 28, was charged with first-degree burglary, fourth-degree assault and criminal mischief. He remains in custody. The police affidavit, contained in a court filing, describes a chaotic scene at the family’s home in Wasilla, Alaska, when Palin confronted his father over a truck he wanted to pick up.
Todd Palin had told him not to come to the home because Track Palin had been drinking and taking pain medication, according to the affidavit and charging documents.
“Track told him he was [going to] come anyway to beat his ass,” according to an affidavit filed by Wasilla Police Officer Adam LaPointe.
When Todd Palin, 53, confronted his son at the door with a pistol, the younger Palin broke a window and entered the house and started beating his father, according to court filings. Palin pushed his father to the ground and hit him repeatedly on the head, the documents say.
Sarah Palin called police at 8:30 p.m. and said her son was “freaking out and was on some type of medication.”
When police arrived, they saw Todd and Sarah Palin fleeing the house in separate vehicles, Todd Palin with blood running down his face and Sarah Palin looking “visibly upset,” the documents say.
Police confronted Track Palin in the home. He called them “peasants” and told them to lay down their weapons, according to the documents. Eventually, Palin left the house and was placed in handcuffs.
He told police that when he arrived at the house, his father aimed his gun at him, and he urged his father to shoot him several times before entering the house, according to the documents.
When policed interviewed Todd Palin, he was bleeding from multiple cuts to his head, and one ear was discharging liquid, the documents say. There is no record of an interview with Sarah Palin; the Wasilla Police Department did not respond to a question about whether its officers interviewed her.
A judge set Track Palin’s bail at $5,000. He remains in custody at the Mat-Su Pretrial Facility in Palmer, Alaska. Palmer Dist. Atty. Roman J. Kalytiak said that if Palin remains in custody, his office must take the case to the grand jury within 10 days. If Palin pays bail and is released, prosecutors will have 20 days to go before the grand jury.
An attorney for Sarah and Todd Palin declined to comment on the case.
“Given the nature of actions addressed … by law enforcement and the charges involved, the Palins are unable to comment further,” John Tiemessen said in a statement. “They ask that the family’s privacy is respected during this challenging situation just as others dealing with a struggling family member would also request.”
Todd Palin declined to comment about the incident, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
“We’re fine. We’re fine,” he said when asked whether he sought medical treatment.
Sarah Palin has not commented publicly about the encounter. On social media, she has continued to offer her take on current events and politics.
The incident is the latest controversy involving the Palins since McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate in 2008. At the time, she had been governor of Alaska for less than two years and was a relative unknown in the Lower 48 states. Just days after Palin was named as the vice presidential nominee, she acknowledged that her unmarried teenage daughter Bristol was pregnant.
In the aftermath of the campaign, she faced criticism over her behavior and her spending habits.
In 2014, the family was involved in a drunken brawl on Todd Palin’s birthday, though no one was charged. Track Palin, shirtless and bleeding, “appeared heavily intoxicated and he acted belligerent” during his initial interaction with police officers, according to an Anchorage Police Department report.
In January 2016, Track Palin was arrested on suspicion of punching his girlfriend at the same Wasilla home. He pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm while intoxicated and took a plea deal that resulted in other charges being dismissed. His girlfriend later filed for custody of their child and sought a protective order against him.
At the time of that arrest, Sarah Palin was campaigning for then-candidate Donald Trump during the GOP primaries and caucuses. She alluded to her son’s arrest during a campaign rally, suggesting that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from a military deployment in Iraq.
She described soldiers “who come home from the battlefield bringing new battles with them [and] coming back different than when they left for the war zone.”
“When my own son is going through what he goes through coming back, I can certainly relate to other families who feel these ramifications of PTSD,” she said, before accusing then-President Obama of not respecting veterans.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin frequently spoke of her son’s service in the military. He was stationed in Iraq during most of the general election campaign.
McCain’s selection eventually proved unpopular among some conservatives who questioned whether Palin had the experience and knowledge to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
But Palin’s folksy personality and colloquialisms strongly resonated with the party’s base, and she became a powerful force in national GOP politics after her and McCain’s loss. She resigned as governor the following year but was a frequent presence in the media and on the campaign trail as a forceful critic of President Obama and an early supporter of the tea party. Palin sparred with the GOP establishment, and her endorsement swung Republican primary races and drew dollars.
She was the subject of several books as well as a documentary by Stephen K. Bannon. She starred in a television show and flirted with a presidential run in 2012. Her prominence has waned since then, but she remains a popular draw among socially conservative voters.
Todd and Sarah Palin met in high school and wed in 1988. He worked in oil production on the North Slope of Alaska and as a commercial fisherman. Todd Palin, a champion snowmobile racer, liked to refer to himself as the “first dude” when his wife was governor.
White House lawyers are expected to meet with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office late this week seeking good news: that his sprawling investigation’s focus on President Trump will soon end and their client will be cleared.
But people familiar with the probe say that such assurances are unlikely and that the meeting could trigger a new, more contentious phase between the special counsel and a frustrated president, according to administration officials and advisers close to Trump.
People with knowledge of the investigation said it could last at least another year — pointing to ongoing cooperation from witnesses such as former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, as well as a possible trial of two former Trump campaign officials. The special counsel’s office has continued to request new documents related to the campaign, and members of Mueller’s team have told others they expect to be working through much of 2018, at a minimum.
The dynamic threatens to intensify the already inflamed political atmosphere enveloping the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Even as White House lawyers have pledged to cooperate with Mueller, Trump and his allies have accused the Justice Department and FBI of bias and overreach.
The latest salvo came this past weekend, when a lawyer for the presidential transition accused Mueller of wrongfully obtaining thousands of emails sent and received by Trump officials before the start of his administration. The special counsel’s office said all the material was legally obtained.
[Trump criticizes how Mueller obtained transition emails, says no plans to fire special counsel]
The meeting’s outcome could deepen tensions as many Trump supporters question Mueller’s credibility and Democrats express fear that the president will seek to fire the special counsel.
Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer overseeing the response to the Russia investigation, did not respond to phone calls and text messages seeking comment. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel, declined to comment.
White House lawyers have told the president he could be exonerated as early as the beginning of the year, after previously reassuring him that he would be cleared by Thanksgiving and Christmas, as The Washington Post previously reported. They have stated publicly that all White House interviews are over and that Mueller’s team is no longer seeking White House documents.
In the meeting this week, they plan to ask Mueller’s investigators if they need more information before reaching a conclusion that the probe as related to Trump is complete, according to a person familiar with the Trump team’s plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
The question that White House lawyers will pose to the special counsel’s office, according to the person: “You’ve had all these witnesses, all these records. Is there anything else you need from the White House?”
Until now, Trump’s legal team has repeatedly pledged cooperation with Mueller’s office. A White House spokesman said there was no plan to change the strategy.
Trump’s legal team has reassured him that it sees no evidence of collusion or obstruction in the records that it turned over, White House advisers said. While the lawyers have told Trump that they expect the investigative team will continue its work related to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort deep into next year, as well as possibly Flynn, they said they believe Mueller should be close to wrapping up the focus on the current White House.
Trump himself has expressed frustration with the probe but has shown optimism that it will not touch him. He told associates recently that he harbors no deep concern over the investigation and noted that his lawyers talk with Mueller’s team regularly, according to a person who spoke with Trump last week and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
When pressed by two advisers to take the matter more seriously and asked why he is so confident in his lawyers, Trump brushed off the concerns. “He is living in his own world,” the person said, predicting that Trump would erupt at some point in 2018 if the probe continued to drag on.
Another associate said that even in private, Trump is “confident, even arrogant” that he has done nothing wrong.
“There is no collusion,” the president said at the White House on Sunday, after saying he was not planning to fire Mueller.
Among people familiar with the probe, there is widespread skepticism that the special counsel’s investigation is drawing to a close.
Already, Manafort and his former deputy Rick Gates have been indicted on money-laundering and other charges related to work they did in Ukraine before the 2016 race. Two others have pleaded guilty and are cooperating, giving investigators new leads to pursue. Agents have gathered huge volumes of documents and conducted their first round of interviews with White House officials.
As recently as last week, Mueller’s team was still asking questions about the firing of James B. Comey as FBI director, one person said.
Legal experts said Mueller would have little incentive to clear the president or other White House aides while he is seeking more information from witnesses.
“I think it’s possible Mueller’s team could give them an idea of how much longer they anticipate their investigation will last,” said Peter Zeidenberg, the former deputy special counsel who helped investigate the leak of Valerie Plame’s covert role as a CIA operative. “I would be shocked if they have a timeline anything similar to what we’ve heard coming from the White House.”
“As far as a clean bill of health, I can’t imagine they are going to be prepared to make a decision like that at this point,” he said of the special counsel’s team. “They are not going to be in a position to make that call until they finish this case and finish discussing all the evidence they have.”
Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for Trump’s legal team, said he thinks it is unlikely that the probe wraps up by the end of the year, but he said he believes it could conclude in the spring. He said that Mueller is aware of the political implications surrounding his investigation.
“Bob understands you can’t have a president who is living under this cloud of uncertainty,” Corallo said, adding that he believes it is possible that the special counsel will at some point call Trump’s lawyers and say, “We are done with the president. There is nothing there.”
[Trump says he won’t fire Mueller, as campaign to discredit Russia probe heats up]
The high-stakes meeting between White House lawyers and Mueller’s team comes as conservative lawmakers and pundits have intensified their demands for a second special counsel to investigate the FBI, pointing to text messages between two former FBI officials discussing their dislike of Trump.
“We are now beginning to understand the magnitude of the insider bias on Mueller’s team,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said last week. Another member of the committee, Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), said Mueller and his team should wear “Democratic Donkeys or Hillary T-shirts.”
A White House adviser said the president has enjoyed the attacks. In recent weeks, he has spoken to a number of Fox News hosts, Republican lawmakers and others who have castigated Mueller’s team, the adviser said.
The attacks on Mueller’s investigation grew this weekend after an attorney for the presidential transition told congressional investigators Saturday that thousands of pages of the organization’s communications were provided to Mueller by the federal General Services Administration.
Trump’s lawyers learned Mueller had the emails this month when witnesses were quizzed on the material. Some of the documents contained sensitive information that wasn’t related to the Russia investigation, according to a person familiar with the material.
A GSA spokeswoman declined to comment. Mueller’s team said it obtained all documents legally.
Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
The Trump administration on Monday evening publicly acknowledged that North Korea was behind the WannaCry computer worm that affected more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries earlier this year.
As a result, the administration will be calling on “all responsible states” to counter North Korea’s ability to conduct cyberattacks and to implement all “relevant” United Nations Security Council sanctions, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
“The [WannaCry] attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible,” Thomas P. Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser, said in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. “We do not make this allegation lightly. It is based on evidence. We are not alone with our findings, either.”
He is expected to issue a public statement Tuesday morning.
North Korea was widely suspected to have created the virus, paired with ransomware that encrypted data on victims’ computers and demanded money to restore access. Until now, the U.S. government had not publicly stated as much.
In June, The Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency had linked North Korea to the creation of the worm. In October, the British government declared that it believed North Korea was the culprit. The following month, the CIA issued a similar classified assessment, which has not been previously reported.
[The NSA has linked the WannaCry computer worm to North Korea]
The official noted that the U.S. government has released technical details of North Korean cyber-tools and operational infrastructure and has worked with other countries to lessen North Korea’s ability to conduct further tests or generate illicit funding.
The May 12 global attack hit critical sectors, including health care, “potentially putting lives at risk,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a move not yet public. This follows a pattern of disruptive and harmful cyber-activity by the reclusive country. Leader Kim Jong Un has pushed to develop hacker forces as a low-cost, high-impact tool that can rattle the nerves and damage the systems of more powerful nations.
In November 2014, North Korea hacked Sony Pictures’ networks, disrupting computer systems, stealing and releasing corporate emails and demanding that the studio cancel the release of a satirical film depicting Kim’s assassination. The attack led to economic sanctions from the Obama administration.
The WannaCry attack, the official said, “demonstrates the importance of basic cyber hygiene, including keeping systems patched and up to date, as well as the need for strong cooperation between public and private sectors to share information, prevent and mitigate cyberthreats.”
The Security Council sanctions on North Korea focus on its activities to develop a nuclear weapon. The administration, however, seems to be linking North Korea’s general pattern of bad behavior, including in cyberspace, to the call to implement all sanctions.
Democratic lawmakers criticized the disparity in the administration’s response to Russian hacking in the 2016 election and its reaction to North Korea’s cyber activities. “President Trump is handling the intelligence assessments regarding North Korea and Russia completely differently, staging an elaborate media roll-out to press on sanctions against North Korea while at the same time discrediting the assessment by these very same intelligence agencies that the Kremlin interfered with our election,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member on the committee on oversight and government reform.
Josh Dawsey and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.
DUPONT, Wash. — An Amtrak train making its inaugural trip on a new service from Seattle to Portland, Ore., derailed near here early Monday while crossing an overpass, toppling cars onto one of the busiest highways on the West Coast, killing at least three people and injuring about 100.
The wreck left 65-ton passenger rail cars scattered — several of them on the highway below, one tucked under the bridge it was to cross, others beside the railroad embankment and one dangling from the bridge with an end resting on the rail car that had been in front of it. In all, 13 of the train’s cars jumped the tracks, officials said.
At least five vehicles passing below on Interstate 5 — including two tractor-trailers — were heavily damaged as the rail cars from Amtrak Cascades train 501 fell from above.
Seconds later a member of the train crew radioed a dispatcher: “Amtrak 501, emergency, emergency, emergency. We’re on the ground. . . . We were coming around the corner to take the bridge over I-5 there, right north in Nisqually, and we went on the ground.”
The dispatcher asked, “Is everybody okay?”
The crew member replied: “I’m still figuring that out. We got cars everywhere and down onto the highway.”
He was one of five crew members aboard the train, along with 80 passengers, Amtrak said.
[Amtrak crew member’s call to 911: ‘We went on the ground’]
Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste speaks with the media about the Amtrak derailment.
A Washington State Police spokeswoman said three people had been confirmed dead and about 100 people were transported to hospitals, many of whom remain in critical condition. It was unclear whether everyone had been accounted for.
“There are a lot of critical injuries,” spokeswoman Brooke Bova said. “This is a very complex scene.”
Authorities said they do not know what caused the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending 20 of its investigators to the scene. They were expected to arrive late Monday.
At a news conference at NTSB headquarters in Washington, D.C., board member Bella Dinh-Zarr had few details about the crash or potential causes but said agency officials would know more once their team arrived.
Those investigators will include at least a dozen specialists in train operations, mechanics, tracks, signal systems, human performance and survival factors. The lead investigator is Ted Turpin, who also Washinworked on the 2015 Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia and was the lead investigator for the Long Island Rail Road train crash at New York’s Atlantic Terminal early this year.
A website that collects train location and speed information from Amtrak’s live map said the train was traveling at 81 mph as it neared the curve. Trains are supposed to reduce their speed to 30 mph to negotiate the curve, according to Rachelle Cunningham, a spokeswoman at Sound Transit, which owns the tracks.
Dinh-Zarr said that speed is one of the first factors that NTSB investigators will be looking at. They will also be assessing what crash-avoidance technology existed on the tracks or on the train and whether that technology functioned properly.
Though Amtrak trains are equipped with it, the railroad said the train was not using positive train control, a system that would have slowed it as it entered the curve. The system requires that sensors also be placed along the rail bed, and those were not scheduled to be in place until sometime next year, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.
[Trump budget slashes federal aid for rail, long-distance Amtrak routes]
The Amtrak Cascades train has daily service between Seattle and Portland, departing from Seattle at 6 a.m. local time. DuPont is about 50 miles south of Seattle; the crash happened between the Tacoma and Olympia rail stops, shortly after 7:30 a.m.
Chris Karnes, a passenger, said the train was approaching a curve at a high speed before it came off the tracks.
“It seemed like we were reaching sort of a bend in the tracks and all of a sudden we were slammed into the seats in front of us,” Karnes told CBS News. “And then the car careened down an embankment and came to a stop. After that happened we could hear and feel the cars crumpling and breaking apart.”
Karnes, who was in a car toward the front of the train, said he and other passengers had to kick out a window to get out. Passengers had visible injuries — “cuts, people bleeding,” he said. “I did see one person who was laying on the ground and not moving.”
Daniel Konzelman was driving down the highway when he and a friend saw the jumble of derailed cars. The emergency response training he’d acquired during his Eagle Scout days kicked in, and Konzelman, 24, immediately pulled over, according to the Associated Press.
He and his friend climbed into train cars to look for victims. Some were pinned under the train; others appeared to be dead. Konzelman helped the passengers who looked as if they could move out of the train and tried to comfort those who looked seriously injured. He and his friend stayed for almost two hours. “I wasn’t scared. I knew what to expect,” Konzelman said, adding: “I prepared for the worst and hoped for the best. I saw a little bit of both.”
Danae Orlob, 27, of Olympia was in the back seat of a car that passed under the bridge moments after the derailment occurred, before any authorities had arrived.
“What I originally thought was a semi was actually a train car just flattened on the ground,” said Orlob, who was on her way into work in Bellevue. “The train cars were on both sides of the bridge, which I can’t even imagine how that would have happened.”
She said there was a stillness in the moments after the crash, as if everyone was stunned. “It was quiet. It was weird, and made me think the accident had been there much longer than it had,” she said. “It was definitely surreal.”
She looked back and saw a single rail car dangling over the highway from the bridge.
“It looked mostly intact, so the best thing I could hope was, I hoped everybody could have gotten out of there okay,” she said.
Within a minute, she said, a police car pulled up to the scene. Then an avalanche of first responders, ambulances, firetrucks and other emergency vehicles poured onto the highway.
The Amtrak train was on its first run on tracks that had been rebuilt at a cost of $181 million, using a 14.5-mile bypass owned by the regional transit authority and avoiding a more scenic but slower passage along the coastline. Officials celebrated the opening of the Tacoma station along the rebuilt route with a ribbon cutting Friday.
The new Amtrak Cascades service is part of an expansion of Amtrak intercity passenger rail service that includes station upgrades and expansions and the addition of new locomotives.
An Amtrak train derailed Monday morning in Washington state about 40 miles south of Seattle. (Washington State Patrol)
Though the train had been tested on the track, Monday’s run was the first time it made the trip with a full load of about 80 passengers and their baggage.
Washington and Oregon jointly operate the Amtrak Cascades intercity passenger service. The trains share the tracks with freight trains and are authorized to travel at top speeds of 79 mph, according to information from the Washington State Department of Transportation.
The new service is said to save 10 minutes in travel time between Seattle to Portland.
“On behalf of everyone at Amtrak, we are deeply saddened by all that has happened today,” Amtrak president and co-chief executive Richard Anderson said in a statement Monday. “We will do everything in our power to support our passengers and crew and their families.”
At an afternoon news conference, Gay Banks Olson, assistant superintendent at Amtrak, said the railroad’s first priority is to take care of passengers, employees and relatives affected.
“It is horrible that this happened to these passengers, but we are very grateful that there weren’t more people involved,” Banks Olson said. “We are going to do everything we can in the next few days and weeks to support these passengers and their families.”
State police are providing resources and getting supplies to the scene, the spokeswoman said.
Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said on Twitter: “Today’s tragic incident in Pierce County is a serious and ongoing emergency. Trudi and I are holding in our hearts everyone on board, and are praying for the many injured.”
Rescue crews had to use chain saws, hydraulic equipment, air chisels and various other tools to extricate victims.
Jay Sumerland, battalion chief with West Pierce Fire and Rescue, described the scene as surreal.
“When there are cars dangling over the freeway, it’s very precarious and dangerous to the fire service crews,” he said. “Firefighters put themselves in a very dangerous place and did a great job searching all over those cars.”
The power car behind the locomotive carried 350 gallons of fuel. The Washington State Department of Ecology and Amtrak were working on mitigation. Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste said his agency performed an initial investigation in anticipation of NTSB’s arrival.
Cranes also were being brought in to stabilize the cars before state transportation officials could inspect the bridge.
Lazo and Halsey reported from Washington, D.C. Martine Powers and Faiz Siddiqui in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
Army Sgt. La David Johnson was killed by enemy rifle and machine gun fire during an October ambush in Niger that killed three other soldiers, according to a newly revealed report.
The military investigation, reported by the Associated Press on Sunday, cited that Johnson of Miami Gardens, Fla., was fighting to the end after fleeing an attack by an offshoot of the Islamic State and wasn’t captured or executed, as previously believed. U.S. officials familiar with the findings spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to describe details of the investigation, which has not been finalized or publicly released.
Johnson’s body was recovered by local forces two days after the Oct. 4 attack, found in thick brush where he tried to take cover, the AP said. His boots and other equipment were stolen, but he was still wearing his uniform.
Johnson’s death was at the center of a heated controversy between President Trump and U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., after Trump told Johnson’s pregnant widow that the soldier “knew what he signed up for.” Wilson overheard the phone call and publicly denounced Trump’s remarks.
John Kelly, a former four-star Marine general and Trump’s chief of staff, joined the controversy by saying he was stunned at Wilson’s remarks, calling the congresswoman an “empty barrel.”
The soldier’s widow, Myeshia Johnson, later told ABC’s Good Morning America that she was “very angry” at the tone of Trump’s voice during their call and how the president struggled with the slain soldier’s name.
She said she wanted to know more about how her husband died and why his body wasn’t recovered for 48 hours. She said she wasn’t allowed to look in his casket when it arrived.
“I need to see him so I know it’s my husband,” she said. “They won’t show me a finger, a hand; I know my husband’s body from head-to-toe and they won’t let me see anything.”
The Pentagon is investigating the incident and has not released details about the exact mission of Johnson’s commando team. U.S. officials have said the joint U.S.-Niger patrol had been asked to assist a second American commando team hunting for a senior Islamic State member, who also had former ties to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The team had been asked to go to a location where the insurgent had last been seen and collect intelligence.
After completing that mission, the troops stopped in a village for a short time to get food and water, then left. The U.S. military believes someone in the village may have tipped off attackers to the presence of U.S. commandoes and Nigerien forces in the area, setting in motion the ambush.
Military officials told the AP that a medical examination concluded that Johnson was hit by fire from M-4 rifles — probably stolen by the insurgents — and Soviet-made heavy machine guns. It is believed he died in the attack.
The bodies of the three other U.S. Green Berets were located the day of the attack but not Johnson’s, leading to speculation that he was carried away or executed by the enemy. The other Americans killed were: Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, 35, of Puyallup, Wash.; Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, 39, of Springboro, Ohio; and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright, 29, of Lyons, Ga.
Sen. John McCain left the nation’s capital Sunday to spend Christmas in Arizona with his family as he battles brain cancer, giving his Republican Party one less vote as it is expected this week to attempt to push through a contentious tax plan along party lines.
President Trump told reporters Sunday that McCain and his wife, Cindy McCain, have “headed back [to Arizona], but I understand he’ll come if we ever needed his help, which hopefully we won’t.” He added: “But the word is John will come back if we need his vote. It’s too bad. He’s going through a very tough time, there’s no question about it. But he will come back if we need his vote.”
Trump said he spoke to Cindy McCain by phone Sunday. “I wished her well. I wish John well,” he said.
McCain was hospitalized Wednesday while receiving chemotherapy treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda and at the nearby National Institutes of Health. He received a diagnosis this year of glioblastoma, an aggressive, malignant brain tumor that can cause headaches, seizures, blurred vision and other symptoms.
In a brief statement, the senator’s office provided an assessment from Mark Gilbert, chief of neuro-oncology at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute.
“Senator McCain has responded well to treatment he received at Walter Reed Medical Center for a viral infection and continues to improve,” Gilbert said, according to the Associated Press. “An evaluation of his underlying cancer shows he is responding positively to ongoing treatment.”
News of McCain’s travel first emerged Sunday afternoon after his daughter Meghan McCain tweeted about the family’s holiday plans.
“Thank you to everyone for their kind words,” she wrote. “My father is doing well and we are all looking forward to spending Christmas together in Arizona. If you’re feeling charitable this Christmas @HeadfortheCure or @NBTStweets to help find a cure for brain cancer is what I recommend.”
McCain, 81, missed several Senate votes last week while at Walter Reed. He voted for the initial version of the tax plan, which includes sweeping tax cuts and initially passed the Senate with 51 votes. Without McCain, Republican leaders have a razor-thin margin to pass the final version, which has been in House-Senate negotiations and cannot afford any more defections.
But for Republicans, the bar to pass the legislation isn’t quite as high as initially feared. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said last week that they will vote for the measure after indicating earlier that they would not.
McCain has been in “good spirits” while receiving treatment, Ben Domenech, Meghan McCain’s husband, said in an appearance Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“I’m happy to say that he’s doing well,” said Domenech, a conservative writer. “The truth is that as anyone knows whose family has battled cancer or any significant disease, that oftentimes there are side effects of treatment that you have. The senator has been through a round of chemo and he was hospitalized this week at Walter Reed.”
McCain, Domenech added, “remains one of the toughest men on the face of the earth, as you know.”
Multiple agencies in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have reportedly been told by the Trump administration that they cannot use certain phrases in official documents.
Officials from two HHS agencies, who asked that their names and agencies remain anonymous, told The Washington Post that they had been given a list of “forbidden” words similar to the one given to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A second HHS agency was told not to use the phrases “entitlement,” “diversity” and “vulnerable,” in documents. It was also told to use “ObamaCare” as opposed to the “Affordable Care Act” and to refer to “marketplaces,” where people purchase health insurance, as “exchanges.”
The Post’s new report builds on its Friday report that the CDC had been told it could no longer use the phrases “evidence-based” and “science-based” in documents being prepared for the 2019 budget.
The list of “forbidden” words and phrases given to policy analysts at the CDC also included “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender” and “fetus.”
The Health and Human Services Department has pushed back on the first report.
“The assertion that HHS has ‘banned words’ is a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process,” HHS spokesman Matt Lloyd told The Hill on Saturday.
“HHS will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans. HHS also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions,” the statement continued.
According to the Post, similar guidance on word choice has been issued at the State Department. Employees at the State Department have been told to call sex education “sexual risk avoidance,” which primarily refers to abstinence-only education.
The Trump administration has been repeatedly scrutinized for declining to acknowledge scientific findings, particularly related to climate change. Trump has also repeatedly expressed doubts about the scientific consensus that humans are the main cause of a warming planet. Numerous members of his administration and his appointees have also denied aspects of the scientific consensus related to global warming.
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Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta lost power on Sunday.
USA TODAY
A major power outage halted air traffic Sunday at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, grounding all of the hub’s outgoing flights and halting incoming traffic for tens of thousands of travelers hoping to land at the world’s busiest airport.
The disruption, coming just eight days before Christmas, promises to wreak havoc on one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.
The outage, reported around 1 p.m. ET, forced travelers out of the darkened terminal and into an icy rain for hours, witnesses reported. It stranded others on Atlanta’s tarmac as they waited to get off of incoming flights.
Others were stranded on electric trams that run between terminals — they had to be rescued by firefighters.
Around 7:30 p.m., airport officials said power had been restored to the airport’s Concourse F. Crews, they said, were working “with great urgency” to restore power to the rest of the airport, .
As utility crews worked to fix the outage, passengers described a chaotic scene inside a smoke-filled terminal.
Today in the Sky: Power outage hits Atlanta airport; more than 600 flights canceled
List: List: The world’s 20 busiest airports, 2016
Traveler Olivia Dorfman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution she was about to board a flight home to Indiana when the lights went out. Ten minutes later, she said, “a buzzer went off in the background — that has been going on for over an hour and every so often bright lights flash in the ceiling.”
Dorfman said smoke filled the area near a gate in the D Concourse. She said at least one other passenger described the acrid smoke as that of an electrical fire.
At various times, airport workers tried to herd passengers toward the smoky area and away from it, Dorfman said. “This has been very bizarre. No one seems to know what they’re doing.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a ground stop for flights into the airport, holding them at departure airports across the world. The FAA said departures also were delayed.
Please let the people standing outside on the tarmac back into the building, it is too cold outside.
— Audrey Owens (@audreyowensvb) December 17, 2017
Several airlines, including Southwest and Delta, said they were canceling flights due to the power outage. In a statement, Delta said it had canceled more than 450 flights and was “working to deplane customers from aircraft that have not been able to park at a gate due to the outage.”
Country music star Travis Tritt tweeted late Sunday afternoon that he was stuck in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., because of the outage. “How on earth can the busiest airport on earth have power down and no backup generators up and running?” he wrote. “This makes ATL airport designers look dumb as hell!”
Flight tracker: Is your flight on time?
Late Sunday, Georgia Power said it the outage was likely caused by an electrical fire at an underground facility. It expected to have electricity restored to the airport by midnight.
Hartsfield-Jackson last year handled 104,171,935 passengers, the most of any airport worldwide.
In a statement the FAA said the airport’s tower could operate normally, but that departures were delayed “because airport equipment in the terminals is not working.”
Malou Cadavillo and her 16-month-old granddaughter sat on a motionless luggage carousel waiting for a car seat after making it to baggage claim by the light of fellow passengers’ mobile phones.
Cadavillo told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that her grandsons, 7 and 11, were uneasy. One of them added, “I hope there’s no monsters down here.”
Contributing: Michael King, WXIA-TV, Atlanta.
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